Pranav Kanade - Moving from TradFI to Web3 and Building a Digital Assets Alpha Strategy (EP.237)

In today’s episode I’m talking to a friend of mine, Pranav Kanade, who happens to work for another really good friend of mine, Jan van Eck. Pranav was in the financial industry for a while, and like many, went down the crypto rabbit hole a couple of years ago. Jan, who’s a good friend, mentor, and a legend in the financial industry, went down the crypto rabbit hole himself and has been forever trying to do a Bitcoin ETF — doing the good work of dealing with the red tape and corralling the regulators. 

Jan’s tasked Pranav with building a crypto fund; and I’ve been trying to learn all this since forever, so I wanted to check in with Pranav. 2022 was obviously one of the most wild, fraud-ridden years in financial history, so I wanted to continue learning from someone who now makes his full living from this – and find out how he’s reacting in the bear market. As we try to dissect the industry here on Panic with Friends, I’m asking the same type of questions I ask him each month after reading his analysis. And you can be certain Pranav will be a regular on the show. Let’s learn together as new entrepreneurs and investors continue to build out the future of the web. Enjoy! 

Guest - Pranav Kanade, Portfolio Manager at VanEck Digital Assets Alpha Fund 

howardlindzon.com, vaneck.com 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @pkan90, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/pkanade1

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

• Introduction (00:38)
• Welcome Pranav (04:50)
• 2022 Crypto deleveraging (06:34)
• U.S. crypto regulation outlook (08:29)
• Which layer needs regulation? (09:08)
• 2023 outlook for crypto (10:05)
• The crypto ‘bottom’? (11:04)
• Underlying tech (11:36)
• Transitions take time (14:43)
• Stablecoins (15:57)
• Tim Cook owns crypto (18:56)
• Self-custody assets (20:43)
• Venture funding (24:06)
• Genius of Bored Apes (27:28)
• Potential NFT use case (29:30)
• Coinbase web3 wallet (31:22)
• Dealing with liquidity (32:35)
• Moving from web2 (33:02)
• Speculation became community (35:04)
• Incentivizing tokens (36;52)
• The inflection point (37:44)
• Picking the right blockchain (40:02)
• Building on Polygon (41:31)
• Micropayments (44:24)
• NFTs for artists/creators (52:56)
• Wrapping up (54:17)
• Closing thoughts (55:53)